This chapter introduces an international dimension to the theoretical framework. I focus on European integration and its domestic politicisation as challenging factors for social concertation, and propose a set of heuristic hypotheses to explore the impact of European integration on social concertation. European integration has been seen as a major influence on concertation, yet the causal mechanisms whereby this influence takes place have stayed relatively unclear. Whereas existing scholarship has tended to posit a somewhat mechanistic relationship between them, either in the direction of a weakening or of a strengthening, this chapter explores the complex mechanisms whereby domestic politics mediates the effects of European integration on social concertation

First, European integration has become increasingly politicised at the domestic level, and the domestic adaptation to “Europe” no longer takes place in a “de-politicised” manner through technocratic or administrative procedures of macro-economic adjustment. As European integration becomes more politically salient domestically, I argue that social concertation as a political strategy can also play a role for governments to build a domestic consensus about European integration. Second, European integration and processes of internationalisation in general can also affect social concertation by reconfiguring the context of party competition (Kriesi et al. 2008). The most prominent evolution in this respect has been the emergence of right-wing populist parties capitalising on the opposition to internationalisation in all its forms (Bornschier 2010). Insofar as concertation was traditionally linked to stabilised patterns of party competition, this evolution can be believed to challenge the capacity of corporatist bargains to be translated into actual policy reforms.

Internationalisation and Social Concertation: A Prelude

Almost thirty years ago, the two seminal volumes written by Peter Katzenstein (1984, 1985) highlighted the corporatist strategies adopted by small European states to cope with international economic interdependence. The small countries he analysed – Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands , Sweden , Norway , Denmark and Belgium – displayed the typical corporatist characteristics outlined in the previous chapter: strong cooperation between the social partners and the state in the elaboration of social and economic policies on the one hand, and strongly organised labour markets on the other. These countries, Katzenstein argued, reacted differently from bigger states to the international economic crises of the 1970s. Instead of confrontational or protectionist strategies, they opted for negotiated processes of adaptation and free trade policies.